










































Discovery and Selection


208  ATLA 2023 PROCEEDINGS

Discovery and Selection
A Librarian’s View of Student Recruitment and 
Admissions
Andrew Keck, Chief of Staff, Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist 
University

ABSTRACT Have you ever wondered about the work of recruitment and 
admissions? And how it connects to the work of librarians and libraries, 
especially collection development? Join an insider’s view that breaks down 
the essential tasks of recruitment, admissions, and financial aid while con-
necting these to the common work of librarians. We will also together ex-
plore ways that admissions departments and libraries might form creative 
partnerships that can advance the work of institution. These could include 
work around recruiting student workers, articulating research values, and 
preparing for future generations of students.

As I’ve reflected over my career of presentations at Atla Annual, this 
one seems to be the latest in a series that brings the curiosity and col-
laborative spirit of librarians to collaborate and work within other 
professions. One of my first presentations at ATLA Annual Confer-
ence was entitled “Are we IT” and considered the relationship be-
tween librarianship and information technology. For the old-timers 
here, it was during the 1998 Annual Conference that was held in the 
Xerox corporate center outside of Washington, DC. Since then, I’ve 
followed the curious and collaborative spirit of librarians into sev-
eral different contexts, including my pivot into seminary adminis-
tration now five years ago.  

In the early Fall of 2022, our Associate Dean for Enrollment Man-
agement was about to announce her resignation and it became clear 
that there was likely to be a gap between her last day in an official 
capacity and the start of a successor. With admissions, it’s essential 
to have a good handoff. As I brainstormed with the Dean and oth-
ers, I quickly became the preferred option — not because I was any 
admissions genius but due to the trust of the current head, the cur-



LISTEN AND LEARN SESSIONS  209

rent admission staff, and of course, the dean. Plus, librarians are or-
ganized, responsible, and mostly friendly.

While starting the transition in October, I was fully in the posi-
tion by December 1 and a search for new enrollment management 
leader was well underway. I figured this was a six-month interim at 
best. Into February, it became clear that the search failed as there 
were no applicants that the search committee was prepared to invite 
for interview. We decided to let the search rest while we tinkered 
further with the job description and title, changing the language 
from “executive director” to “assistant dean.” We relaunched the 
search two weeks ago and added a clearer timeline with deadlines 
and a couple of days in August for interviews. That’s where we are 
now — receiving applications — and so I suspect that I will be able 
relinquish this role around October. I will have had a full year of 
admissions experience.  

Today, I want to share a bit about what I have learned, how it par-
allels library work, and reflect about deepening connections between 
libraries and offices of admission.  

THREE THINGS THAT I HAVE LEARNED

First, recruitment and admissions for theological education is a tough 
gig in ways that are worth reflecting about, given the implications for 
libraries and librarians. The demand for full-time and credentialed 
clergy is uneven but decreasing. Please understand that not every-
one who wants to go to seminary wants to become clergy, but given 
that it’s a significant purpose for MDiv and some MA degrees, the 
reduction on the demand side is palpable. You will note my specific 
reference to full-time and fully-credentialed. At least in my denomi-
nation, the United Methodist Church, the balance continues to shift 
toward part-time, alternatively credentialed clergy — who tend to 
be less likely to seek a graduate-level theological education for what 
is ultimately a part-time job. Second, and related to the first point, 
there is simply less interest in theological education, particularly 
among young generations who are also numerically smaller than 
earlier generations. In other words, you have fewer people and a 
smaller percentage of those are interested in theological education. 
Third, many of the usual pipelines or sources of prospective students 
are smaller or broken. Less demand, less interest, and less concen-
tration of prospective students. There used to be churches, camps, 



210  ATLA 2023 PROCEEDINGS

colleges that a seminary admissions recruiter could attend and find 
a dozen students interested in theological education. One might not 
get all of them to attend your seminary but there would at least be a 
critical mass of conversation about the seminary attendance. Now, 
seminary recruiters must go more places to find smaller numbers 
of prospective students. 

Second, there is a long and complex flowchart from prospective 
student to actual student. As the Assistant Dean for Enrollment Man-
agement, I’m often asked, “how do the numbers look for next fall?” 
and I realize that there are many, many numbers based on where stu-
dents may be in the flow. We tend to track inquiries (people who have 
inquired), applications awaiting submission, applications awaiting 
materials, applications submitted, decided, admitted, denied, admit-
ted and accepted offer, admitted and matriculated, admitted and 
enrolled, enrolled at census date. When I was asked back in April to 
estimate how many new students we would expect to have in the fall, 
I looked back at historical numbers to figure out what percentage of 
inquires or applications awaiting submission typically would make 
it to census enrollment. I also came to find out that only 27–42% of 
the fall entering class had typically been admitted by the end of April. 
This makes for some anxious summers!

Third, the bleeding edge of recruitment is marketing. At Perkins, 
we have made some investment in what is often called inbound mar-
keting. In my translation, this is effort to build and engage users with 
content related to our brand, and to cultivate these persons over 
time such that some percentage of them would apply and become 
students. This effort makes use of search engine optimization and 
keyword strategies. As an example, our marketing firm said for some 
strange reason, the two-word combination seminary school seemed 
to capture more searches than just the word seminary. It was coun-
terintuitive to us; a seminary is a school, and while we were used to 
school of theology or divinity school or theological seminary, semi-
nary school is not a phrase in common usage. We followed the data 
and wrote a blog that regularly using the two-word phrase seminary 
school. Anyway, this in-bound marketing work got us into the world 
of TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU. TOFU (or top of funnel) uses this meta-
phor of a funnel where you would start with a larger universe of 
people at the top of the funnel who would be engaging with your con-
tent and then end up with smaller universe of people at the bottom 
of the funnel that would be interested in theological education. The 



LISTEN AND LEARN SESSIONS  211

idea was that we might attract someone into TOFU, or top of funnel, 
by a blog post or a video. If they found us through Google searching 
or an ad, we would consider them TOFU but then we would offer 
“sign up to get this great ebook or longer video that explains more 
about this thing.” Then, we might consider them MOFU, or middle of 
funnel. They are interested enough to give us their name and email 
address. Once we would have some of the contact information, we 
would use that to engage them in further content: to see another 
video and eventually, we would invite them to attend a virtual event 
or to learn more about our degree programs. Here, they would be 
BOFU, or bottom of funnel. Sometimes awkwardly, a dating metaphor 
is apt here. How to do you make the original introductions? How do 
you begin to exchange or share information, even personal infor-
mation like phone numbers and email addresses? How do you get to 
sharing information about a degree program and for them to share 
their educational/vocational interests? How do you invite someone 
to attend a session to learn more or be part of a campus visit? How 
do you get someone to consider and commit to apply (queue the 
ring!), follow through with the application and solicitation of refer-
ences, negotiate and accept the financial aid package (dowry), and 
then overcome any cold feet and show up to classes. And then, per-
sist through an entire degree program (the third anniversary for a 
full-time MDiv). 

PARALLELS WITH LIBRARIANSHIP

The Planning and Art of Selection in Collection Development
For me, this is where I saw the greatest parallels, except we are in a 
current period of abundance of books and scarcity of students. The 
parallels are a bit stronger if one considers an earlier period when 
books were relatively scarce and had to be sought after as well as 
chosen. One of the exercises I went through with the admission staff 
and others was to develop the admissions version of a collection de-
velopment policy. Not that we always get to choose what books are 
published or in this case, which students will apply but what would 
be an ideal entering class. For us, this ended up being related to imag-
ining the classroom experience and the critical mass or ratios that 
might influencing the vibrancy and flourishing of the classroom. For 
instance, we ideally wanted a certain representation of students who 



212  ATLA 2023 PROCEEDINGS

have been employed in ministry, a certain representation of students 
who were coming straight from undergraduate institutions, various 
representations of age, ethnic and gender identities, and minimum 
numbers and ratios among our degree programs. What’s an ideal 
cohort or classroom size? How is it different for on-campus versus 
hybrid education? What are reasonable minimums or maximums?

Just as librarians might chose to go to various book publishers, 
dealers, or fairs, where should we go for recruitment? Just as librar-
ians might seek out publishers that align with their own faculty pub-
lishing or use within the curriculum, admissions looks for the con-
texts that will most likely yield students interested in our seminary 
and its programs. We are a United Methodist school and so we go to 
other Methodist-related colleges, universities, and campus minis-
tries. We find conferences and gatherings that include our alumni 
and those who might influence a prospective student. For example, 
we have a Baptist House of Studies. There are some kinds of Baptists 
that would be open to coming to Perkins while others that do not. So, 
it is important to be recruiting among the right kinds of Baptists or 
in our case, the left kinds of Baptist. 

One of the differences here is that ultimately, in libraries, the 
library chooses the book — the book or other resource generally 
doesn’t get much say in the matter, whereas in admissions the choice 
of admission is a mutual one. Still, the selection and acquisition of a 
licensed resource is perhaps a little bit closer to the admissions pro-
cess. For a licensed resource, a library can indicate interest but then 
might be left to negotiate price and terms of the license. Similarly, a 
seminary and a student can indicate mutual interest but a good bit 
of the decision for the student is dependent on the financial aid pack-
age. Also, like a license, we can put conditions on students in terms 
of maximum or minimum course load they can take in semester. 

Once one comes to agreement about admissions and financial aid, 
we have a new parallel in tracking the financial aid packages and 
terms over time (just as a library might track price and license), en-
suing that the student arrives in a similar way that library systems 
might track the arrival or availability of purchases resources. New 
student orientation is typically the handoff between admissions to 
academic affairs student life in a similar way that the end of acquisi-
tions involves a handoff to cataloging and circulation.  



LISTEN AND LEARN SESSIONS  213

The Scaffolding of Information Literacy
As alluded to at the beginning, the admissions and recruitment pro-
cess in many cases involved developing the knowledge and capabili-
ties of prospective students in ways that can be roughly like infor-
mation literacy. Some prospective students only barely understand 
theological education, the difference between degrees, the various 
vocational outcomes, or the fact that a good theological education 
will not answer all their questions about God but rather only helps 
them to pose better ones. (Again, sort of like libraries.) As an admis-
sions staff interacts with prospective students, we try to scaffold our 
messages and interactions to help students better understand these 
unarticulated but broad principles. At the point of entry, there are 
also lots of detailed instructions regarding the orientation for en-
tering classes and community. In my days in theological education, 
new student orientation was often a multi-day affair: there can be a 
lot to learn to fully operate a degree student in a complex institution 
within higher education. 

The Descriptive Nature of Cataloging 
Part of getting the right messages out to the right people at the right 
time means a vigorous description of prospective students. We do 
track what emails we send to them, which ones they open, describe 
the nature of the phone calls or email interactions, which events do 
they attend, which programs were they curious about, or where they 
seem to be stuck in their application. In theory, we could identify ev-
eryone who has contacted us or responded to our contact in the last 
nine months but hasn’t indicated their interest in a specific degree 
program and send them a message that describes our degree pro-
grams. Or perhaps we do some video profiles of alumni in a diversity 
of vocations and then we send this to prospective students who have 
started but not completed an application as a way of helping them 
envision vocational goals related to their education. So, in similar 
ways to descriptive cataloging, we have to describe both the prospec-
tive students and the content/messages that we would want to send. 

The Customer Service of Public Services 
Hospitality, friendliness, and welcome are traits for both admissions 
offices and the public services of libraries. You want both the physi-
cal office and the virtual spaces to be welcoming and you want staff 
to be responsive in answering questions. Like a reference interview, 



214  ATLA 2023 PROCEEDINGS

some questions are going to be quick and factual while others are 
going are going to dig deeper and need to take longer. Also, one must 
keep an updated website, printed or digital guides, and other mate-
rials that describe and guide the user toward a particular degree or 
concentration. 

CONNECTING ADMISSIONS AND LIBRARIES

Library as Asset and Partner in Recruitment and Admissions
When doing the campus tour, the library stop helps develop the pro-
spective student’s imagination about being a student. What would it 
be like to have access to such a wealth of digital and print resources? 
What would it be like to use the library as a place of study? What 
kinds of rare materials and exhibits could they explore and experi-
ence as a student? It’s a similar visualization of having student sit 
in on a class. As someone who has sat at a public service desk when 
a tour is coming through, it’s often helpful to give admissions some 
talking points about the library that are accurate and factual or pro-
vide some training for admission staff/student ambassadors.

With enough advance notice, there may ways of pulling together 
a sample of resources or rare books when you know its visit day for 
the Baptists or the sacred music program. 

Similarly, the design and usability of the library and the library’s 
webpage has an impact. Does the library seem to have carpet or a 
website that seems to be from the 1980s? Does the library have wel-
coming staff and spaces? Is it a place where student might want to be? 

Libraries as Recruiters 
In some cases, as the library acts as a front door for the seminary — 
particularly with longer hours than most admissions offices, you may 
unknowingly host prospective students in your library. They could be 
external patrons, who have been developing a curiosity about some 
aspect of theology and regularly come in to use the library. Alumni 
who use the library are 70% more likely to do a Doctor of Ministry 
degree. (I just made that statistic up.) There could be student work-
ers, especially when hiring undergraduates or library colleagues 
working at other schools who say, “you know, I’ve always thought 
about going to seminary.” 



LISTEN AND LEARN SESSIONS  215

Partly because the library is thought of as a safe and welcoming 
space, a library may receive some direct inquiries about the kinds of 
programs offered at the seminary or the qualities of a faculty or the 
cost of an education. It’s great when you can make a personal con-
nection but not so good if you are guessing or making stuff up about 
your seminary. Please feel free to refer folks to someone in the ad-
missions office. Or better yet, ask the person their name and contact 
information so that an admissions person can follow-up. 

As a regular librarian in prior institutions, I’ve served on admis-
sions committees, evaluated applications, helped host and organize 
orientation days, conducted special tours of the library or rare book 
room, joined prospective students at meals/receptions, etc. I’m sure 
many of you have done this and even greater things with the admis-
sions professionals in your schools. I would be pleased to hear your 
experiences and ideas as well as any questions you might have.


